**Parent Topic**: [[Software/README]] Launch traffic is uniquely hard to plan for. Public interest is notoriously unpredictable — some Google products saw launch spikes **up to 15x their initial estimate**. The motivating case: NORAD Tracks Santa drove Keyhole (the Maps/Earth satellite-imagery service) to **25x normal peak — over 1 million requests per second** on Christmas Eve 2011, a launch with a hard deadline, huge publicity, and a steep ramp. (Google even built kill switches it nicknamed "make-children-cry switches.") Two planning consequences: - **Launch traffic mix differs from steady state**, so a launch spike can invalidate load-test results that assumed a normal workload. - **Capacity interacts with redundancy.** If three replicated deployments serve peak traffic, you actually need four or five — one or two redundant — to absorb maintenance and unexpected malfunction. Datacenter and network resources have **long lead times** and must be requested well in advance. The practical de-risking move: **launch one region or country at a time** to build confidence before larger launches. Ask explicitly whether the launch is tied to a press release or promotion, how much traffic and growth to expect, and whether all needed compute has already been secured.